9 Awesome, Unexpected Gifts for Your Favorite Acupuncturist
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Hi acupuncture friends!
It’s been awhile since we’ve talked! I’m finally back from vacation in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. What an experience!
I’m a firm believer in taking time off so you can reconnect with your creativity. I had some plenty of time for brainstorming and came up with some exciting ideas for 2018 that I can’t wait to share with you.
Thank you for the crazy enthusiasm about my new Facebook Ads course that was released on Black Friday, by the way!
I was getting lots of questions from acupuncturists about why their Facebook Ads weren’t working: why Facebook would deny their ads for publication (!), why they weren’t getting a good ROI on their ads, how to navigate Ads Manager, etc.
I wanted to answer those questions and share my screen to help take the frustration out of Facebook Ads. So far the response to the course has been phenomenal!
Overall, 26 new students joined my online marketing courses in November and are happily chugging away through the step-by-step video tutorials and worksheets. I love seeing their progress!
I have some really exciting and educational interviews planned for you in 2018, including an introduction to a brand new acupuncture business success podcast called The Golden Cabinet.
In 2018 we’re going to get even deeper into the nitty-gritty of how to build a successful practice. I might even be offering group coaching for the first time, you guys… keep your eyes peeled for that!
For this week, as we lead up to the holidays, I thought we’d keep it light and fun.
Here are some of my favorite fun-and-funky acupuncture-themed gifts. These make a great surprise for your favorite acupuncturist… including yourself!
Share this post with your family to let them know what you want for Christmas… there’s still time for holiday shipping!
Enjoy!
9 Unexpected Gifts for Your Favorite Acupuncturist:
This comes in other colors, too. Let your favorite acupuncturist, acu classmate, or acu professor know how much you appreciate them!
3. Reflexology socks!
These are ridiculously fun! I love when patients tell me about the great results they’ve experienced with reflexology, and then we get to talk about the similarities between reflexology and Chinese medicine. Makes a great gift for patients, too!
4. Ridiculous acupressure slippers
I can’t get over how goofy these look… but at the same time I’m obsessed! All those magical pressure points massaging my feet? Yes, please!
5. Acupuncture Art Prints
Framed, on canvas, or all by themselves… these gorgeous professional photos of acupuncture treatments are perfect for your home or office.
6. Acupuncture World Domination T-Shirt
Fun, super-cute t-shirts that make a great conversation starter about your practice. These are so soft!
7. Fascinating reading for cozy winter evenings
This one has been on my list for awhile. Looking forward to finally reading it over my holiday break. Have you read it yet? I have a feeling it’s going to be a bit controversial… which means I’ll LOVE it!
8. Passion Planner
For acupuncturists with serious 2018 #goals, the Passion Planner is your new best friend. I had one of these last year and wow– it helped me get organized in a serious, step-by-step way that I couldn’t have done on my own.
Passion Planners are especially great for defining how you want your practice to look in 2018, and organizing/scheduling all of the steps to get there. Highly recommended!
Love it! I never, ever get tired of acupuncture puns, do you? They always make me grin.
Hope you loved this list of unique acupuncture gifts!
If you know of other fun gift items, please list them in the comments! As acupuncture becomes mainstream, more and more fun gift options are popping up – please share!
Until next week,
xo,
Michelle
Original article and pictures take www.michellegrasek.com site
Ancient traditions had understood very clearly the power that rituals have in creating and affirming a desired reality or outcome. One a psychological level, rituals can serve to install a habit or reinforce a belief or particular mindset. It can channel our attention and intention towards a desired goal and then let the subconscious mind work on it while we are busy doing other stuff.
Many highly successful people have been known to use mini-rituals on a daily basis and some would even tell you that it was one of the keys to create their success mindset. Even some athletes and top performers are well known to maintain certain daily rituals as a way to reinforce a certain pattern of thinking and envisioning goals in their mind.
I highly recommend these morning rituals as a way to kick start and empower you for the day ahead. Of course daily rituals can also be done at another time during the day, but morning time seems to work best as it helps you to subconsciously act on them as you go through your day, thus transforming a potentially ‘bad’ day into a awesome one. I also suggest that if you choose to use more than one ritual, you reinforce the habit of doing one before starting another.
OK here we go:
Jot Down your Most Important Tasks:
This is a very practical ritual. Start your day by identifying and writing down from one to three of the most important tasks you need to complete during that day. These tasks are ones that support important long-term goals that are aligned to your purpose, passion or general direction in life. For example, if writing a book or building an online community are important long term goals which are aligned to your personal growth, then an important task for the day might be finishing off a particular page or two of the book or coming up with fresh content ideas for the online community. What is important in this ritual is that you identify these tasks and complete them as early in the day as possible. Of course you will have other tasks apart from the ones you will write down but these are tasks that can be tackled later or batched up and carried out in one go.
Writing your most important tasks in the morning helps you focus your day and life according to what is essential. It helps you prioritize and manage your time better. As a result, you simplify your life by applying your focus and energy on what really counts for your overall life progress.
Script your Goals in Writing or Drawing:
This is similar to the previous idea but different in its application and purpose. Writing down your most important tasks of the day is a way to have a concrete structure of action to follow. Affirming your goals, on the other hand, is a very powerful way of crystallizing your vision and goals in life into your everyday mental space. Writing down or doodling your goals on a piece of paper helps you externalize those goals by giving them form. In return they are reflected back in your subconscious mind thus reinforcing them and integrating them more wholly.
An example of this would be writing down “I am achieving greater success in my career” or “I am becoming healthier and stronger through my exercise”. Notice the present tense being used as a way to tell yourself you are in the process already. Remember the life script we subconsciously follow? You are basically modifying the script to be applied now in the present. Drawing or doodling can be equally, or even more, effective (if you are more of a visual person) as it summarizes a graphical representation of your goals. For example, if your goal is to build a new house or live in another country, you can draw the house or draw things that symbolize the country you want to live in.
Booting up your Energy with Qi Gong Exercises:
According to Chinese philosophy, Qi (pronounced ‘Chee’) means the life force or energy inherent in all things and Qi Gong is the practice to cultivate and circulate that energy in your body. This may sound esoteric or complicated but actually Qi Gong is really a set of simple exercises aimed at increasing your health and vitality. There are numerous forms and practices available for free through the online media.
Hot Water with Lemon:
Simply add a slice of lemon in a glass of hot water and drink every morning. This is a very simple ritual I follow faithfully every morning. Essentially, apart from being a good source of vitamin C and a great way of flushing out toxins in the morning, it balances and maintains the PH levels in the body, reduces pain and inflammation in joints and knees and helps nourishing brain and nerve cells. Here are some more benefits of drinking hot water with lemon.
Feeling Gratitude:
Feeling gratitude and appreciation for those little signs and moments of joy happening in your life is probably one of the most overlooked or underestimated rituals. It is a perfect morning ritual to start your day on a very positive key. The real power of gratitude is that it makes you pick out and focus on what is working in your life – what is in tune with your being as a whole. It is selectively positive. It reinforces happiness and positivity by shedding light on those awesome things, small or big that grace your every day living. Quite often we just pick out the pain points, the problems, the bottlenecks, whatever it is that is not working in our life and causing friction, anxiety and unhappiness. This is like constantly rewriting the script of your life with a negative or tragic overtone. Your subconscious mind follows faithfully that script you write whether it is a negative or positive one.
So feeling gratitude is undoubtedly an immensely empowering ritual. Start your day by being thankful for those positive things that happened the previous day or throughout the week. It could be something really petty and small. It doesn’t matter. You might be grateful for an unexpected visit from an old friend, a beautiful encounter with a kind stranger, a new opportunity or whatever it is that shines your way. Do it every morning and see what happens during the day :)
The practical advantages are obvious. For example you gain more time in doing exercise such as walking, cycling or Qi Gong as suggested above. You gain more time to be with yourself to reflect, meditate or, more importantly, carry out the other morning rituals! So rising early can be seen as a foundation for all the other morning rituals. Many, like myself, find that they are more productive in the early hours of the day.
Also, various studies have shown that there are many other benefits from waking up an hour or two earlier in the morning. For example it has been shown that sleeping early and waking up early helps the body attune with the earth’s circadian rhythms thus promoting more restorative sleep. Other curious results from such studies show for instance that early risers tend to be more optimistic and can anticipate and solve problems more efficiently than the norm.
Listen to Uplifting Music:
In itself this ritual is a no-brainer. Uplifting music can have a direct impact on our mood especially in the morning. It charges us emotionally and tunes us into a more positive outlook of the day ahead. Most people wake up to music or listen to music as they commute to work. Very often however they tune in to a radio or randomly pick a playlist from their device. Being more selective and conscious of the music you listen to in the morning can have a great impact on your day and life in general. Try to listen to more uplifting music in the morning even if, or especially if, your mood does not dictate so.
It’s funny how we try to choose music according to our mood. For example if you are feeling down or disappointed by something, you are more prone to listen to music that reflects that mood – for instance blues, sad songs or downtempo music. This has the effect of reinforcing that mood. What you need to do is the exact opposite and retune your mood by listening to music that beats to a different tune with that mood.
Original article and pictures take www.corespirit.com site
7 Mind-Body Practices to Transform Your Relationship with Stress
If you were to eavesdrop on the conversations taking place around you, stress would likely be one of the most common words you would hear. People talk about feeling stressed about their work, the economy, global politics, deadlines, their relationships, and just about everything else. Many suffer from the emotional and physical consequences of chronic stress, which include accelerated aging and increased rates of heart disease, anxiety, cancer, depression, migraine headaches, and other serious disorders.
While stress is considered an epidemic problem, I’ve never believed that it exists in the environment or in external situations. At the Chopra Center, we define stress as our response to what is happening. It’s not the overdue payment, traffic jam, or fight with our spouse that causes stress
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It’s our thoughts and the story we tell ourselves about an event or circumstance that create the emotional upset, racing heart rate, shallow breathing, surging adrenalin, and other symptoms of the stress response.
The analogy of a surfer is useful here: If you’re a skillful surfer, every wave is an exhilarating adventure or at least an opportunity to learn something new. If you’ve never learned how to surf, on the other hand, every wave is a terrifying potential disaster.
Surfing the Waves of Change
Fortunately, learning how to deal effectively with stress doesn’t require any athletic ability—it’s a skill that anyone can learn. With a little practice, instead of continually being triggered into a stress response by outside situations and thoughts in your mind, you can learn to spend more time in your own natural state of well-being.
Here are a few of the most effective tools we teach at the Chopra Center for navigating life’s ongoing waves of change.
1.) Meditate
Meditation is a simple yet powerful tool that takes us to a state of profound relaxation that dissolves fatigue and the accumulated stress that accelerates the aging process. During meditation, our breathing slows, our blood pressure and heart rate decrease, and stress hormone levels fall. By its very nature, meditation calms the mind, and when the mind is in a state of restful awareness, the body relaxes too. Research shows that people who meditate regularly develop less hypertension, heart disease, insomnia, anxiety, and other stress-related illnesses.
We are all engaged in a continuous internal dialogue in which the meaning and emotional associations of one thought trigger the next, usually without our being consciously aware of the process. Buddhist psychology describes this process as samskaras, which can be seen as grooves in the mind that makes flow thoughts in the same direction. Your personal samskaras are created from the memories of your past and can force you to react in the same limited way over and over again. Most people build up their identity on the basis of samskara without even realizing they are doing this.
In meditation, we disrupt the unconscious progression of thoughts and emotions by focusing on a new object of attention. In the practice of Primordial Sound Meditation taught at the Chopra Center, the “object of attention” is a mantra that you repeat silently to yourself. A mantra is pure sound, with no meaning or emotional charge to trigger associations. It allows the mind to detach from its usual preoccupations and experience the spaciousness and calm within.
The more you practice meditation, the more you are able to experience expanded states of pure awareness. In the silence of awareness, the mind lets go of old patterns of thinking and feeling and learns to heal itself. If you’re interested in learning Primordial Sound Meditation, I encourage you to visit www.chopra.com to find a certified teacher in your area.
2.) Resolve the Stressful Situation If Possible
You may not have much control over many of the sources of stress in your life, but if there is action you can take to resolve a stressful situation, do it! Talk to friends about what you can do to change a situation or gain a new perspective on it. Consider getting help from a conflict resolution expert if necessary.
Conscious Communication
One skill that is extremely helpful in preventing and eliminating stress is conscious communication, also known as nonviolent communication. It’s a way to clearly communicate your needs in a way that improves the likelihood that they will be met. With practice, you can learn to express your needs, ask for what you want, and create more fulfilling, stress-free relationships. At the Chopra Center, conscious communication is part of the core curriculum for our staff members and is also taught at several of the workshops and programs we offer. To learn more, the book Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg, is an excellent place to start.
3.) Practice Mindful Awareness of Your Body
While the mind is constantly flitting to thoughts of the future and memories of the past, the body lives in the only moment that truly exists: the present. One of the best ways to relieve stress is to tune into your body. Your first and most reliable guide to balance, harmony, and happiness is your body. When choosing a certain behavior, ask your body, “How do you feel about this?” If your body sends a signal of physical or emotional distress, watch out. If your body sends a signal of comfort and eagerness, proceed.
What can you do to start listening to your body? The most basic elements are as follows:
Feel what you feel. Don’t talk yourself into denial.
Accept what you feel. Don’t judge what’s actually there.
Be open to your body. It’s always speaking. Be willing to listen.
Trust your body. Every cell is on your side, which means you have hundreds of billions of allies.
Value spontaneity. Emotions change, cells change, the brain changes. Don’t be the policeman who stops the river of change by blocking it with frozen, fixed beliefs.
Enjoy what your body wants to do. Bodies like to rest, but they also like to be active. Bodies like different kinds of food that are eaten with enjoyment. Bodies like pleasure in general.
One of the most basic ways to be aware is by grounding yourself in the body. There is no mystery to it. Simply feel your body whenever you’ve been distracted. Let’s say you’re driving a car, and somebody cuts you off. Your normal reaction is to be agitated or angry; you jump out of the calm, relaxed focus that connects you to the mind-body field. Instead of being overshadowed by this disruption, just go within and feel the sensations of your body. Take a deep breath, since that is an easy way to come back to body awareness.
Keep your attention on these sensations until they disappear. What you’ve done is cut off the stimulus response with a gap. A gap is an interval of non-reaction. It stops the reaction from fueling itself. It reminds the body of its natural state of harmonious, coordinated self-regulation.
4.) Understand Your Unique Stress Response
Your mind-body constitution (known as your dosha in Ayurveda) plays a great role in how stress affects you. Ayurveda offers specific recommendations for each mind-body type, including the most effective ways to cope with stress.
Here are the stress patterns of the three doshas:
Vata: Those with predominantly Vata constitutions have the greatest tendency toward anxiety and worry. Normally creative and enthusiastic, in the face of stress, Vatas tend to blame themselves for their problems and become extremely nervous and scattered.
Pitta: Pitta types are usually warm and loving, but if they’re out of balance, typically react to stress by finding fault with other people and becoming angry.
Kapha: The most even-tempered dosha is Kapha. Those whose mind-body type is predominantly Kapha are usually easygoing and gentle, but when faced with overwhelming conflict or stress, they may withdraw and refuse to deal with the situation.
If you don’t know your dosha, you can take the Chopra Center’s online Dosha Quiz to identify your mind-body type and get more information about how to stay in balance and manage stress.
5.) Get Plenty of Sleep
Restful sleep is an essential key to staying healthy and vital. When you’re well-rested, you can approach stressful situations more calmly, yet sleep is so often neglected or underemphasized. There is even a tendency for people to boast about how little sleep they can get by on. In reality, a lack of restful sleep disrupts the body’s innate balance, weakens our immune system, and speeds up the aging process.
Human beings generally need between six and eight hours of restful sleep each night. Restful sleep means that you’re not using pharmaceuticals or alcohol to get to sleep but that you’re drifting off easily once you turn off the light and are sleeping soundly through the night.
You can get the highest quality sleep by keeping your sleep cycles in tune with the rhythms of the universe, known as circadian rhythms. Ayurveda teaches that the optimal sleep routine is to rise with the sun and go to sleep when it’s dark out, or at least by 10 p.m.
Ideally, eat only a light meal in the evening, before 7:30 if possible, and then go for a leisurely walk. The body’s digestive powers are strongest between the hours governed by the Pitta dosha (10 p.m. to 2 a.m. and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.). By eating a light dinner, instead of focusing all its energy on digesting a heavy meal, your body can use the Pitta cycle to detoxify the body and get the deep rest it needs. You can go for a leisurely walk after dinner and then be in bed by 10 p.m.
It’s also very helpful to download your thoughts from the day in a journal before going to bed so that your mind doesn’t keep you awake.
6.) Practice Yoga
Yoga is another timeless healing practice for releasing stress and the damaging effects of the fight-or-flight response. Not only is yoga an excellent physical exercise that increases your flexibility and strength, but it also balances the mind and body, calming the nervous system, increasing the production of stress-relieving hormones, and releasing stored toxins.
You don’t need a lot of expensive equipment or to be in tiptop shape to start practicing yoga. All it takes is loose clothing, a mat (some classes will provide mats) and the desire to learn.
There are many different styles of yoga. Most use a series of postures designed to stretch and strengthen muscles and also use focused breathing to quiet the mind. One of the most popular styles in the U.S. is hatha yoga, a relatively slow-moving, gentle style. Other styles such as Ashtanga and power yoga are more vigorous. The Chopra Center teaches a unique style of yoga known as the Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga, which focuses on body-centered restful awareness.
The intention of the Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga is to integrate and balance all the layers of our life so that our body, mind, heart, intellect, and spirit flow in harmony. As we expand our awareness through the practice of yoga, we become more capable of perceiving the richness that life offers.
Find out about the different kinds of yoga that are offered at classes in your area. Choose the style that fits your goals and level of fitness. You can also get started by using a good instructional book or DVD at home, although it’s usually better for beginners to start with a class.
Whichever style of yoga you choose, take it slowly at first. Don’t try to force yourself into difficult poses at the beginning. After a while, you will develop more flexibility, strength and stamina. Your teacher shouldn’t push you to do poses that aren’t comfortable. If your teacher is going too fast, talk to him or her, or look for a class that is a better fit.
With a regular practice, you will begin to experience a sense of calm and wellbeing that extends beyond the yoga mat into your daily life.
7.) Do Activities You Enjoy
Part of being stressed out is feeling that you never have enough time, so adding more activities to your schedule might seem like the last thing you need. But if you make even a little bit of time for an activity you really enjoy, the payoff can be huge: You feel calmer and happier and can deal with work and other demands better. Whether it’s playing music, doing a craft, or working on your car, do something that absorbs and relaxes you.
The goal in all of these practices isn’t to try to control the flow of life so that you’ll never experience stress or frustration again; the secret is to be patient and offer yourself compassion as you learn to respond to challenges from a place of peace and calm.
Original article and pictures take www.corespirit.com site
